


True Blue

by GoldenDaydreams



Series: The Rest is Confetti [1]
Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Clairvoyance, Family Dynamics, Fluff, Gen, Mentions of addiction, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Post-Series, Recovery, Sibling Bonding, This is so soft, haunted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 04:20:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16757815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenDaydreams/pseuds/GoldenDaydreams
Summary: The nursery had become a labour of love, and a means of reconnecting.Steve and Luke paint the nursery, and bond.





	True Blue

**Author's Note:**

> This fandom is so little, I feel obligated to write for it. I told myself, no new projects, so... just one shots for now :P

The nursery had become a labour of love, and a means of reconnecting. Steve kept it a secret from Leigh, kept the door closed at all times. He stood inside, working at the trim around the window while Luke worked on the second coat of the wall. Luke was nearly two years sober, and their sisters were due in at the end of the week for a little surprise party that Steven had been keeping under wraps. While the siblings had promised no more secrets, he- and Theodora and Shirley- agreed that the party was an exception to the rule.  
  
Steve couldn’t help but think of how things in their lives seemed to right themselves after they shut the door to Hill House- after their father’s sacrifice. He and Leigh were a stronger couple than they’d ever been, even if he kept the majority of the truths buried. Theodora had recently been awarded for her exceptional work, her relationship with Trish was still going strong. Shirley’s marriage had weathered a rough patch, but had been rebuilt, her business was still doing well, and her children were happy and healthy.  
  
Everything just seemed to be better, stronger. Their relationships were happier, more fulfilling. Things just made more sense. Those answers he'd needed for so long were finally found, maybe they weren't what he had wanted to hear, but they had been what he needed to hear.  
  
He paused in painting the trim, and looked at Luke. His little brother had been sober since before his final entry to Hill House. His body had somehow, miraculously recovered from being injected with rat poison. Steven knew he would never forget how his brother looked, prone on the floor, frothing at the mouth, needle in his arm. It made his stomach clench at the thought alone. Now, Luke neared two years of sobriety, the longest he'd gone in his adult life. Not only that, but he'd acquired his GED, was taking college courses for physical fitness, he worked part-time at a gym's front counter, a lot of the rest of his time was spent either painting the nursery, or helping Leigh who was on maternity leave. Luke lived in the spare room, and it gave Steven a peace of mind to know that he was safe, and not out using. All in all, his little brother had transformed into an entirely new person.  
  
"You're staring," Luke said without taking his eyes off the wall, the roller coating the walls in a Tiffany blue.  
  
"Sorry, just... thinking," Steven said, dipping his paint brush into the white paint, and carefully painting the trim.  
  
"About?" Luke asked.  
  
No secrets. Steven tried to abide as much as possible. "I'm just... I'm really proud of you."  
  
Luke rolled his shoulders as he lowered the roller back into the pan of paint. "I'm proud of all of us."  
  
Steven smiled, at the end of the day, so was he. Still, a thought whirled around at the back of his mind, things he'd never asked, things he'd been afraid to know the answer of, even after living with Luke for the better part of the past two years.  
  
Luke glanced over his shoulder. "Just ask, Steve."  
  
Steven frowned. "It's insensitive."  
  
"That's never stopped you before," Luke said with a laugh.  
  
Steven sighed. "When did you... um... use-"  
  
"For the first time?"  
  
Steven felt bad for asking, for bringing it back up. "Yeah."  
  
"We talking drugs in general, or heroin?" Luke didn’t sound bothered, but he’d gone through rehab so many times, spoken about it to strangers so often that maybe talking it out with his brother came a little more naturally.  
  
"I don't know, whichever."  
  
"Drugs was back in high school, just a bit of weed then, and I kicked it fast," Luke admitted. "Heroin was... shit, that summer you and Shirl went to college."  
  
"Why?" The detail bothered him. He had stayed an extra year in high school to bump a few courses so he could get into the college he wanted, he had to work the year after at the local hardware store to save for tuition and that ensured that he and Shirley left for college the same year.  
  
"Weed because it was supposed to calm you down. Unfortunately it just made me paranoid, it made things... harder, I couldn't... I couldn't close them out. I've never been good at it-"  
  
"Them?"  
  
"You know damn well what I'm talking about, Steve," Luke said. "Don't be purposely dense."  
  
"Sorry." Old habits died hard.  
  
"Heroin made it so I couldn't see them. It... I don't know, killed off that part of my vision. If I was high, I couldn't see that shit. I didn't dream when I slept, it was this chemically manufactured peace." Luke shrugged. "I got into it so young I didn't ever learn to cope without it."  
  
Steven painted a small section. “Why when we left? Why then? We kept in touch-”  
  
“Don’t try to shoulder it, it wasn’t your fault, or Shirl’s.” Luke rolled the roller in the paint, but didn’t lift it back up. “But… when you two left it was like… it was like you two had granted us some kind of protection. Like a wall, your denial, Shirley’s ability to look at the shit we’d been through, box it up, and shove it in a closet never to look again. I don’t know, but when you two were gone it was like the rest of us were magnets. Theo was always so closed off, she ended up taking off halfway through her last year of high school to travel. That left me and Nell, we’d always been the most visually susceptible. Her night terrors and sleep paralysis increased. She kept seeing The Bent Neck Lady. I kept seeing the Tall Man, sometimes other figures. I had dreams, and there was even an instance where I sleepwalked- Nell told me she found me by the front door flicking the porch light on and off. It was just… I thought if I dosed myself, just a little, just enough I wouldn’t see.”  
  
“Do you ever see anything now?” Steven asked, having to know, his heart thumping a quick beat in his chest.  
  
“Sometimes,” Luke said. “Do you?”  
  
“Sometimes I have dreams” Steven admitted. “Of the house, of Nell, but I don’t think that’s the same thing.”  
  
Luke nodded. “It’s not so bad now for me, it’s more like… a shadow moving along the wall, or a feeling of being watched. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just the drugs fucked me up permanently. Maybe after seeing shit for so long my brain can’t process not seeing it. I don’t know. It’s not like getting stalked by the Tall Man, or having Mom show up and beg me to come home.” He looked back to the walls. “Sometimes it’s Nell. She doesn’t usually talk to me, but sometimes I see her, like a shadow that comes and goes. Like… like she’s checking in on us.” He flashed a little smile. “That, I don’t mind at all.”  
  
Steve smiled back, it was a nice thought. He dipped his paintbrush but paused yet again. “Leigh and I have been talking and if the baby is a girl, then we want to name her Eleanor.”  
  
“The baby is a girl,” Luke said, as he always did when the gender of the child was brought up. Leigh wanted it to be a surprise, and Steve wasn’t in the position to deny her any happiness. He knew his siblings had a bet going, Shirley and Theo both bet on the baby being a boy, Luke always sounded like he was talking about a fact rather than a probability.  
  
“You can’t know that,” Steve said, carefully painting.  
  
“You can’t know that,” Luke mocked in a muttered voice that made Steve chuckle.  
  
“Why are you so sure?”  
  
“I just am. I just know.”  
  
Steve grinned, finished up with the paint and took a step back. “You hungry?”  
  
“Yep.” Which wasn’t a surprise, once the drug habit was kicked, Luke’s appetite returned with a vengeance.  
  
“How do you feel about pizza?” Steve asked, grabbing his phone off the little table they had in the center of the room, home of a couple of cups of water, and a small speaker that played the local rock station.  
  
“As long as you don’t get pineapples.”  
  
“Leigh loves pineapples.”  
  
“They’re disgusting,” Luke said, nose wrinkled.   
  
“I agree.”  
  
“Just get a small for her, and a large for us,” Luke said.  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Steve found the delivery app, and started to compile their order while Luke finished the last small section of the wall. “The colour is good, I really think Leigh’s going to love it,” he commented, submitting the order.  
  
Luke set down the pole, and planted his hands on his hips, taking a look around. “Looks plain.”  
  
“Well there isn’t any furniture in here yet,” Steve said. “By the way, you’re still going shopping with me for cribs on Friday, right?”  
  
“Yeah. Shit that reminds me, I have to check my e-mail. I mentioned it to Shirl, and she said she’d send some links,” he shrugged. “Might be helpful.”  
  
“Well it couldn’t hurt,” Steve decided, already dreading the assembly of an item he hadn’t even purchased yet.  
  
“You boys still alive in there?” Leigh called from the hallway.  
  
“We’ll be out soon!” Steve replied quickly. “I ordered pizza.”  
  
“Pineapple?”  
  
“Hell no,” Luke replied right away with a wide grin.  
  
“Don’t make me come in there!” Leigh replied through the door.  
  
“Of course I got pineapples,” Steve said. “Don’t listen to my idiot brother.”  
  
“Oh, the idiot brother, huh?” Luke raised his brows. “In that case, you can share Leigh’s pizza.”  
  
“You can’t eat a large on your own!”  
  
“Watch me.”  
  
“I’m putting the next episode on in five minutes,” Leigh warned, ending their argument. The three of them had been watching an action-comedy series together, and it brought them together in the evenings.  
  
The two of them waited, listening to her walk down the hall before exiting. Steve was halfway down the hall before he realized that Luke wasn’t following. He waited, watching as Luke just stared in the nursery from the doorway. Luke looked like he was talking, but no sound came out.  
  
Steve felt his shoulders tense. “Luke?”  
  
Luke went still, then reached in and closed the door.  
  
“You okay?”  
  
“Of course,” Luke said just as the doorbell rang. He patted at the back of his jeans, and pulled out his wallet. “My turn,” he said, walking around Steve.  
  
He watched his brother walk down the hall, and turn out of his line of sight. Unable to help himself, he walked back to the room. His hand hovered over the door handle for a second before he gripped, turned, and shoved it open in one fluid move. Their paint cans were covered, rollers and brushes needed to be washed, but Steve was too tired and too lazy to be bothered- they were done anyway. The window was open a few inches to get rid of the paint fumes. Nothing out of the ordinary. No shadows. No ghosts.  
  
He shut the door. He could hear Leigh and Luke in the kitchen, the sounds of plates clinking off the stone counter-tops, their voices, and Leigh’s laughter. The sounds loosened the knot in Steve’s chest. All was normal, everything was fine.  
  
_One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven._  
  
And in the kitchen, he joined his family.


End file.
